One last picture of the huge Tea Bagger
turnout in Philly. Look in the center of the pic and to the northeast of the fountain you can see what appears to be thousands of people. No confirmation from Fox News yet so the turnout could possibly be double or triple that.
In all seriousness,
I've asked my friend Kent what exactly are the Tea Baggers marching for or against rather. I was hoping for a slightly decent answer, such as 'we don't like the direction our country is heading and we would like to change it.' I disagree with the purpose of the sentence but it's a purpose nonetheless. Instead Kent's initial answer
was this:
People are angry about the ever-growing, expanding size and scope of the federal government under the Democrats.
And they are angry about government spending, of which BO is the chief culprit.
(If Bush was a big spender, Obama has proposed spending 43 times more than Bush.)
If "people" are angry it's obviously a very small minority of people since Obama has a 66% approval rating currently. But really Kent's answer is so far from factual it's worth touching on a little bit more. Government grew faster under Bush than any president since FDR. He ran up the largest deficit in world history. Obama hasn't even enacted a budget. Plus the tax rate now is the same as it was under Bush. Where were the Tea Baggers at during all that?
Ridiculously so, Kent's suggestion that Obama has proposed spending larger than our last 43 presidents combined is simply not true. After finally getting a link from Kent to support his claim, he
puts up a
Wall St. Journal editorial that states Obama's "budget more than
doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined."
There's a difference between spending and debt. Obama's budget
increases spending 14% over Bush's final budget, hardly equaling the past 43 president's combined. And when we look at the national debt, which is really what
WSJ was saying, we see that the national debt
increased by about $4.9 trillion under George W. Bush. According to the very
WSJ article Kent links to and the
CBO, Obama's first year budget if kept the same throughout an entire 10 year plan (which it won't) would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt. Again, that's slightly lower than Bush's 8 year addition to the national debt. So visibly Obama's debt sum doesn't equal the past 43 president's combined-- it doesn't even equal Bush's.
My question still remains, what exactly are the Tea Baggers protesting? It obviously isn't taxes because the tax rate has not changed and they didn't protest the rate when Bush was president. And it's clearly not federal power because no one president in the last 70 years increased federal power more than George Bush, and yet again they didn't protest any of Bush's federal takeovers. So what is it? If Kent answers I'll keep you updated.
*Update:
My question to Kent
has been answered, at least somewhat. Andrew left a nice reply but Kent's answer once again looks like it came from a third grader.
I think the assumption which Andrew leads to that Tea Baggers are protesting because in the future Obama might increase spending, or might increase the size of government or might increase taxes or might do something you don't agree with is shaky. In the reality based community, when the person you didn't vote for wins it's entirely possible you aren't going to agree with their policies once they take office. Just a suggestion of course.
This sounds like a genius idea.
